Mending Icarus
by AlessNox
Summary: A post Reichenbach story. After a particularly brutal fight that leads to a man's death, John tells Sherlock that he is moving out. Sherlock decides to investigate John in order to figure out why. Warning: Violence, language, suggestive situations. (Updated version of this story is TO MEND ICARUS)
1. Chapter 1 Killer or Hero

Mending Icarus by Aless Nox

_After a particularly brutal case, John tells Sherlock that he is moving out. Sherlock decides to investigate John in order to figure out why. A post Reichenbach story. __**Warning:**__ Violence, language, suggestive situations._

"I've texted Lestrade. He says the police are on their way," Sherlock said as he and John crouched on the floor of the bank among two dozen or so frightened customers.

"But I don't know if that hostage will survive till then," John said, "Do you see the way that man is waving the gun. The safety is off. It could go off any minute."

"Quiet over there, I said quiet!" The masked gunman demanded waving his gun carelessly around the room at the cowering people. He pulled his arm a little more tightly around the neck of his hostage: A blond, middle aged woman in a brown dress and sensible heels. She looked like she had just come to town to shop for clothes for a new grandchild, little knowing that a trip to the bank would lead to this. She squealed as he pointed the gun toward her, walking on her toes as he dragged her toward the teller's station.

"Fill it!" He said to the man behind the counter as the second masked man climbed behind the counter forcing the bag into the teller's hands.

The first man held the gun to the woman's temple. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth contorted into an expression of horror and fear. John started to rise, but Sherlock put a hand on his arm, "No heroics, John. Lestrade will be here soon."

"They'll kill her before then," John whispered, "We've got to do something."

Sherlock looked into John's eyes gauging his intentions. He nodded, then he shrunk down to the floor and crawled behind the line of crouching people until he was lost from sight behind a desk. John slowly crept forward, pushing himself to the front of the crowd of people most of whom had just come into the bank at lunchtime to get a bit of cash. They let him pass through eager to have someone else between them and the gunman who waved his gun freely aiming at the crowd every time he heard a threatening noise.

The woman under his arm was blinking and bending at the knee as if she was about to faint. He pointed the gun at her head. "You stand up lady or I'll shoot you right here. There are plenty of other hostages besides you."

The woman finally did faint slipping from his grasp to the ground. He took the gun in both hands and pointed it down at her head, only to be distracted by Sherlock standing with one hand raised at the edge of the room.

"Excuse me," Sherlock called, "But I need to get into my safe deposit box now." The man, startled, swung his gun aiming directly at Sherlock's head.

At that moment, John charged. He hit the man full on knocking him back, then he reached out to take the gun. The gunman was half a head taller than John. He tried to turn the gun toward John, but he stood too close. John grabbed the man's arm with both of his hands bending away from the gun as the gunman tried to turn it toward his face. The gun fired.

People screamed and ran in all directions. The other masked man jumped up onto the counter to attack John from behind, but the gun went off again hitting him squarely in the chest. He fell backward beside the teller who cowered on the floor crawling away from the pool of blood that was starting to soak into the spilled pound notes.

The gunman turned in surprise when he saw the other man fall, and John took his opportunity chopping at the man's wrist so that he dropped the gun and pushing him across the floor like a Judo master until he crashed up against the wall. John put his hands around the man's throat choking the life out of him. His teeth gritted in an expression of fury.

The gunman, disarmed, seemed to have lost his spark. He tried to talk but all that came out was a screech as John's finger's tightened. His eyes widened in fear as he looked into John's and he slowly passed out. John kept holding his throat. Suddenly there was a tap on his shoulder.

"John."

John whirled around to the man behind him throwing him to the floor. He pressed against his throat, grabbing a convenient scarf and pulling it tight, before he realized that it was Sherlock. A pair of sudden indrawn breaths and John loosened his hands on the scarf. He dropped down on his knees and breathed heavily. Sherlock sat up rubbing his neck. Suddenly there was the sound of sirens and a face peered through the glass door before a host of policemen with riot shields rushed in.

Lestrade walked over to where John and Sherlock sat against the wall of the bank lobby. Some officers were carrying away the gunman. Others took photos of the gun on the lobby floor as medics took care of the fallen woman.

"A little late for the party," Lestrade said. "Nothing to do now but sweep up. This your handywork?" he asked Sherlock.

"No, John's," Sherlock said. "I was going to try to separate them, but he got there first. Always one for the heroics, John."

"I can't say that I mind," Lestrade said, "It seems that no one got hurt, that is no one other than the robbers. John, are you okay? It's just you look a bit out of sorts. Let me call a medic."

"I'm fine, I'm fine," John said, "I just need to go home and get some rest."

"Well, we should be able to get everything sorted here. You get John home to get some rest. We know where you live," Lestrade smiled and patted John on the back as he passed. "Good job there," he said. John walked past without turning.

They rode in the cab in silence. Then suddenly Sherlock cried out, "I didn't get the clock out of the safety deposit box. That was the entire reason for our trip. Excuse me, turn the cab around."

"Ignore him," John said to the cab driver.

"Sherlock, we're going home. The bank will be closed now anyway."

"I suppose you're right," he said sitting back in his seat.

John slouched to one side looking out of the window, or not looking. Sherlock noticed that he seemed quiet, thoughtful, and preoccupied. He hopped out of the cab leaving Sherlock to pay. When Sherlock came into the flat, he left saying, "I'm going up to my room for a nap." Sherlock watched him climb the stairs his step rapidly increasing in speed before he slammed the door.

Weeks later, John sat on the stand at the inquest. His face impassive and emotionless as the judge read the verdict.

"In light of the evidence of the numerous witnesses at the scene, and the fact that there was a clear danger to all involved, Dr. John H. Watson is cleared of all charges. You are free to go."

The gavel pounded and pleased sounds escaped from the audience. As John walked through the courtroom a number of people rushed up to shake his hand. Sherlock fell into step with him as he reached the doorway.

"Now whose the famous one?" Sherlock said smiling. John pushed himself ahead to avoid the crowds and Sherlock rushed behind.

At home Sherlock opened the paper. "It seems the gunman will survive to stand trial. He 's still in hospital though. May suffer brain damage. That's quite a skill you have John. I still have the marks on my neck."

"Sherlock," John said his eyes sharp his voice firm, " I have something I need to talk to you about."

Sherlock put down the paper and looked at John's serious expression. "What is it, John?"

John licked his lips and looking straight into Sherlock's eyes he said. "I'm moving out."

Sherlock examined John. He was sitting forward at the breakfast table. His jaw tense as if he had been grinding his teeth. The edge of his mouth turned down. His right knee bouncing up and down as if he wanted to be off this instant.

Sherlock looked into his eyes, and asked, "Why?"

John leaned back in his chair. He put the knuckle of his right forefinger into his mouth. "Does a man need a reason to go where he wants? I'm just giving you fair warning. I plan to move by the end of the month." John rose from his chair and walked into the living room. Sherlock opened his mouth but said nothing as John put on his coat and left.

Sherlock stood pulling his dressing gown closed around him as he contemplated John's statement. He thought, _"This is unlike John. There was no sign before that he was displeased with our living arrangements, but something has caused him to want to leave now. What has precipitated this sudden reaction? Have I said anything, done anything different today than yesterday? Why was John suddenly so agitated? Something about John has changed. I must investigate it. I need data."_

Sherlock rushed to his room to get dressed.


	2. Chapter 2 Her

"I'm off," John said the next evening after dinner. Their day had been uneventful. Sherlock had pretended to be reordering his computer criminal database, but he had secretly been observing John. Cataloging in his mind all of the changes between the John of today and the John before Moriarty' death and his faked one.

**_He's a bit older. _**

**_He doesn't have a regular girlfriend._**

**_He reads more._**

**_He follows me when he thinks that I can't see him._**

**_He doesn't talk to Mycroft._**

_"Let's start there,"_ Sherlock thought as he pulled out the phone and called his brother.

"Mycroft," he said.

"What do you want now?" Mycroft asked.

"I have a few questions about what happened when I was away."

"If you want to know how John feels, why don't you ask him?" Mycroft said tiredly.

"I'm asking you." Sherlock said.

"I'm hanging up," Mycroft replied closing the connection.

A frown crossed Sherlock's face. He put his phone away and jumped up putting on his coat. John had a good start on him, but Sherlock was not concerned since he had put a tracer on John's phone. He stood in the doorway looking at the little dot on a map before rushing down the steps to hail a taxi. John was in the tube. Reception would go out soon, but Sherlock had already figured out which line he must be on. He was waiting when John walked up out of the underground. Sherlock walked far enough back so that he could just see John's head weaving through the crowd. He stopped in an alcove as John paused to look at a posting in a window. Sherlock turned when he had past and looked at it too. It was an advertisement for an apartment finding service. Sherlock memorized the number and walked on.

John entered a pub. Sherlock followed, slowing to let a pair of men enter before him so that he had a chance to hide, slinking off to the side to crouch in a darkened corner. He watched as John walked over to a woman sitting at the table. She smiled crossing her long tanned legs toward him, one arm stretched out on the table. The other hand resting lightly on her elbow. She smiled up at him with her glossy pink lips, flashing her cleavage before shaking out her long curly black hair. John took her hand and sat. He motioned for a waiter and bought two drinks.

So, John had a woman. Is this why he was moving, to spend time with her? They were obviously quite familiar with each other. She already had her mouth to his ear whispering something that made John move his hand down to rest upon her knee. John drank his beer while the woman ran her finger absent-mindedly around the rim of her martini before taking out the olive and slowly eating it. John stared at her mouth his hand still on her knee.

Sherlock knew where this was leading. He leaned back into the darkness and waited for them to leave, following them only as far as her flat before returning home.

Back in their flat he considered his list again.

_**He's a bit older.**_  
_**He doesn't have a regular girlfriend.**_  
_But he does have someone for ...assignations._

_**He reads more.**_  
_**He follows me when he thinks that I can't see him.**_

_**He doesn't talk to Mycroft.**_  
_Who won't talk to me about it._

**_He was acquitted of an accusation of murder._**

_"That could certainly disturb him, and he seemed agitated after the trial. Could it be the stress disorder? Was he disturbed by the gunshots. He almost killed me!"_

Sherlock remembered John's skull-like face. His eyes wide. His teeth bared. He was frightening, like the face of death himself. For a moment, maybe two, he had thought that John had recognized him, but would kill him anyway. Then, his eyes had changed, and the old John returned. The normal John.

Lately, however, John had been quiet and solitary. He avoided staying in the room with Sherlock, and they didn't talk as they usually did. Mostly Sherlock didn't mind because John was someone who could be a good companion mostly BECAUSE he failed to talk. Sherlock had always appreciated this about him, but now, it disturbed him. John needed to talk to work out his feelings, just as Sherlock liked to talk to work out his ideas.

Sherlock heard the sound of the front door, and John's footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, and John entered. He walked into the room, and hung up his coat.

"You look thoughtful, are you on a case?" he asked.

"A small one," Sherlock said.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not yet. I'm still in the early stages," Sherlock templed his hands before his mouth staring over his fingertips at John.

"Well I'm off to my room. I have an early start tomorrow," John said.

Sherlock nodded waiting for his footsteps to fade away before jumping up, getting his coat, and rushing out of the flat.

Thirty minutes later he was at her door. He knocked. The woman opened the door a crack, a chain holding it shut.

"Hello," she said, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders not quite hiding a glimpse of red lace. She smelled like John.

"Hello," Sherlock said, "I'd like to talk to you a bit about John Watson."

The woman looked at Sherlock suspiciously. "It's late," she said, "I was going to bed. Goodnight."

Sherlock shoved his foot forward preventing her from closing the door. "You weren't going to sleep, you were awake. You had just decided to smoke a post-coital cigarette which you can't do when John is here because he objects, and you were working on your crosswords. The word that you're looking for is "crone" a five letter word beginning with C that means hag. "Witch" won't work because the answer to eleven down is catapult which begins with C. And I'm serious. I need to talk to you about John Watson."

The woman looked down at the crossword on the table beside the door, and then she looked up at Sherlock's face. "Just a moment," she said.

Sherlock removed his foot and the door closed. A few minutes later the door opened and she motioned Sherlock in. She had dropped the blanket on the couch and wrapped herself in a short black coat. The red lace of her negligee peeking out from the bottom.

She put a cigarette to her mouth and lit it before replacing the lighter on the table by the door. Then she picked up the newspaper and erased the word "witch". Sherlock stood up straight turning his head from side to side as he surveyed the room.

"Do you want one?" she asked pointing the packet toward Sherlock.

He looked at it hungrily and then leaned back motioning with his hand. "No thank you. I don't smoke anymore."

She cocked her head to the side dropping the pack on the table. "So," she said, "Who are you and what do you know about me?"

Sherlock finished his analysis and glanced back at her face. " My name is Holmes, and what I knew about you before I came in was very little. I knew from your mailbox that your name was Gardner, and that you and John have known each other for some time, but I know considerably more now."

She took a puff. "So what do you know other than I smoke and I like crosswords?" she asked.

"I can tell that you're single. The second of four siblings. Not very close to your sisters, but fond of your little brother. You work in a news stand, probably near the rail line, but that's just your day job. You've worked as an exotic dancer, but you quit that over a year ago. Now you teach pole dancing classes to middle aged married woman at the community center. It pays a lot less, but you get fewer illicit propositions from the wrong type of men. I could go on, but I do have some questions."

The woman pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and laughed. "You know, he does that, John. He'll tell me what I been doing and what I'm thinking but you're even better at it. Is there anything you don't know?"

"Yes."

"What's that?"

"Your name."

She dumped the ashes into a takeout container and stretched out her hand to him.

"Well Mr. Holmes, I'm Cherie, and before you ask, yes that is my real name. So tell me how do you know John?"

"I'm his flatmate," Sherlock said.

"Flatmate?" she said, "I didn't know he had one."

"I've been away on an extended vacation of sorts, but I've returned. That's why I'm here actually. Can you tell me how long you've known him?"

"Met him a little over a year ago."

"At the strip club?"

"At the news stand. He's a very nice man, John is. Helped me find the job in the community center."

"And then you became … intimate."

"We shagged yeah? I wouldn't say we were intimate if by that you mean we are a couple. We aren't. Nice as he is, John's not the sort of man for commitment if you know what I mean."

"He's not the sort ... for ...commitment?" Sherlock said slowly trying to fit the strange words into his brain.

"Yeah, you know. He's a bit...not there sometimes. You can't trust that he even sees you. Sometimes when we're at it even he'll space out. He apologizes and everything, but he's ...like I said, he's not there."

"I see," Sherlock said not seeing.

"I don't even know why I'm saying these things to you, a complete stranger. It's just, you remind me of him."

"I remind you of John?" Sherlock said surprised.

"Yeah, the way you look around sizing everything up. The way you hold back your emotions. Even the way you talk sometimes. That's how I knew not to call the police. You act a bit like him. Either that, or he acts like you. So what brings you out here in the middle of the night. You must want to talk to me without him knowing. What's so important?"

Sherlock looked into her eyes and wondered himself why he'd come. At first he thought that John might have wanted to leave to stay with Cherie, but now he knew that that was an incorrect assumption. Cherie Gardner was not the type of girl that John would consider for a serious relationship. He had seen John's choices: A doctor, a teacher, a law student. He liked them smart and pretty. Exotic women like Cherie with her hourglass figure and her long black curls that fell to her waist were the kind whose pictures he stored on his laptop, not the kind that he brought home. And now that Sherlock thought of it, John hadn't brought anyone home, not since he had returned. John had hardly left Sherlock's side in all these months.

Cherie puffed her cigarette and stared at Sherlock's face. The red tip glowing as she sucked in. "What I'd give to know what's going on in that head of yours. Come all this way to check on your flatmate's sex life, and you just stand there, hardly asking a thing. Is there anything else you want to ask, Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock looked at her for a moment, and then shook his head. "No. I can't think of anything else right now. I just wanted to know why he was different. If you can think of anything, anything strange about the way that he's been acting recently, then give me a call."

Sherlock reached out and taking a pen from his pocket signed his name and phone number on the edge of her crossword sheet before he turned to go. She lifted the page and called out, "Sherlock? Your name is Sherlock?"

Sherlock turned back to stare at her surprised expression. She lowered the paper placing her cigarette in an empty vase as she walked up to him. She leaned forward examining his face, bending to look him over as if she had never really looked at him before.

"What is it?" he asked.

"He calls out your name," she said, "In his sleep, sometimes. He calls out your name... and he cries."

Sherlock stood still, staring into her questioning gaze, and then he turned heel and left.


	3. Chapter 3 Myths and Dreams

John sat comfortably in his chair in the living room of 221B Baker street reading a book titled "Classic Greek Myths." Sherlock sat across from him with his knees pulled up to his chest. He was watching John.

When Sherlock had faked his death, he didn't think of the consequences for John. He only thought that his actions would make sure that John would not die. Sherlock knew that John had been sad when he died. He had watched from the shadows as John cried beside his grave, but frankly, he had been shocked at the level of emotion John showed when he finally did reveal himself to be alive. There was anger. There were tears, even after all that time.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sherlock had been afraid that John would forget him. He had woken at night worrying that when he finally did show up on John's doorstep, that John just wouldn't care. The fact that this wasn't the case had pleased him. He had also been pleased when John had agreed immediately to the suggestion that they move back into their old flat together.

Sherlock had not noticed before how odd it was for John to simply agree to live with him without reservations. This was probably because the first time, they had become flatmates only one day after they had met, and it had worked out fine. Now John had a new job across town and he had to wake an hour earlier to make it to work on time. He had never seemed to regret the choice, until now.

But John had not said that he was moving for convenience. If he had insisted on living closer to his job then Sherlock might...he would move with him. But John had said no such thing. He gave no explanation, and the mystery of the thing ate away at Sherlock. For some unknown reason, John didn't want to stay with him anymore. He had thought that being alive would fix everything, yet it seemed sometimes as if John was still in mourning.

Sherlock pulled out his list again.

_**He's a bit older.**_

_They say the death of someone close, ages a man. John doesn't look older, but he acts it. He jokes less. He does things in a more determined way, a more decisive way. Before we ran through the streets of London like children. Now we stand apart._

_**He doesn't have a regular girlfriend.**_

_But he does have someone for assignations. He isn't shopping for a wife anymore. He has Cherie, a woman who John treats as a convenience, a woman with dark curls. Curls like mine. A woman who says that John calls out for me in his sleep. I should have asked about the last time. Does he call for me even now? I should find out._

_**He reads more.**_

Sherlock put his feet down and sat up in his chair.

"John." He asked.

John looked up over the top of his book. "Yes Sherlock?"

"What are you reading?"

"I was reading the story of the Minotaur of Crete. Do you know it?"

"I know that a Minotaur has the body of a man and the head of a bull. I must have deleted the rest of the story. What's it about?"

John uncrossed his legs and sat forward one leg outstretched. He placed the ribbon between the pages to mark where he was reading before laying the book down on his lap. "The king of Crete's wife developed a passion for a bull. She gave birth to a son with the head of a bull and the body of a man."

"That couldn't happen," Sherlock said, "Genetics doesn't work that way."

"It's a myth Sherlock. The stories aren't meant to be taken literally."

"But it's totally inaccurate!"

"Do you want to hear the story or not?"

Sherlock closed his mouth and looked attentively at John who continued.

"So, she gave birth to this half-bull half-man creature. The king did not want to kill it outright, so he had his most skillful architect, Daedalus, make a maze called a Labyrinth so that it could never escape and never be seen."

"Is that all?" Sherlock asked.

"No. It's an epic. The story of Theseus founder of Athens. I can let you borrow the book."

"No thank you." Sherlock asked, " I was just wondering why you were reading it?"

John shifted in his chair. He touched the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to his lip in contemplation. "I suppose," He said, his eyes unfocused unless they were focused on his thoughts. "I suppose that I'm seeking something relevant to my life."

Sherlock pinched his brows together waving his arms in exasperation, "How can completely implausible stories from three thousand years ago possibly have any relevance to your life today?"

John shook his head, a tight smile on his face. "I can't explain it Sherlock. Either you get it or you don't." John placed the book down on the table. "Well, read it if you want to, I'm going to bed."

In the darkness of his bedroom, the only noise was the sound of John's steady breathing. The hallway light formed a yellow rectangle at the base of his doorway. A light that grew into a large polyhedron as the door slowly creaked open. The dark shadow cast by a man stretched out not quite reaching the edge of the bed where John lay.

The door closed and he crossed the room. His quiet footfalls never rose above the sound of John's heavy breath. The sheet rose and fell as Sherlock climbed into the bed spooning against John whose labored breathing quieted at his touch. Sherlock stroked the short hairs at base of John's neck, poking their rough tips with the edge of his fingers. Then he bent his arm and rested his head in the crook of his elbow.

Sherlock's hand slid across John's shoulder moving slowly down his arm until it rested in the curve of John's waist. Then he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. His head rolled forward. The breath from his nose causing the hairs on John's head to shiver, dancing across the edge of Sherlock's slightly parted lips.


	4. Chapter 4 Harry

_From the first moment that they met, John had been a mystery to Sherlock. Even so, Sherlock had never thought to investigate him before now. He stood outside the polished door of the flat realizing that he had never really met his best friend's sister._

Harry Watson opened the door. She was wearing a yellow summer dress and holding a drink in her hand. "Come on in." She said, "the weather's fine." Harry was short like John. Her features resembled him, but her eyes were brown, and her ears less prominent.

Sherlock slowly entered the flat. A picture of John in his uniform was on her mantle next to a row of dart awards. Harry appeared to have participated in virtually every pub dart competition in London. It seemed that marksmanship ran in the family.

"Take off your coat." Harry said rushing over to clear off the couch by throwing everything into a chair. "Take a seat. Do you want a drink? I'm in a tropical mood today." she walked over to the kitchen counter where she had a portable bar, " I can mix you something..."

"No thank you." Sherlock said taking in the semi-organized chaos, the collection of music cds, the gap on the mantle where a photograph had been removed but never replaced. He sat down on the couch looking up at the mirrored glass beer sign on the kitchen wall. Harry refreshed her drink and tossed some clothes off of a beige ottoman. They landed on a television set that had been pushed over into the corner and unplugged.

"Well I finally get to meet the bloke himself. " Harry said dropping down onto the ottoman and smiling John's familiar crooked smile. Sherlock found it disturbing to see that smile on anyone else. "It's so nice to meet you at last. John always kept you from me."

"Kept me from you?" Sherlock asked.

"Of course." Harry said brushing her dirty brown hair out of her eyes, She brushed back a strand of red dyed hair that fell back down in front of her ear framing her face. "All that time you lived together and he never invites me over, never brings his flatmate by for a drink. He didn't want you to meet me. I used to think it was because he was embarrassed of me, but maybe he just couldn't bear the thought that I'd take a fancy to you. You are a bit of a looker you know." Harry smiled and then took another drink.

"I thought that you were gay?" Sherlock said.

"I am, mate" She replied, "That's a joke, you know jokes right?" She said fixing him with a stare before slouching down on the stool. "Don't be so serious."

"John always said that he didn't visit you because he didn't like you that much." Sherlock said.

"Ouch! That's harsh. " Harry cried out, "Then again, he always was a bit angry that I stole Clara from him and didn't even keep her, jealous little sod. And I suppose it is true that you can count on one hand our evenings together that have ended well. Even so, it ain't right to say that. John always was a self-important little snot. But Sherlock, you never told me why you came."

"I just want to ask you a few questions about John." Sherlock said.

Harry smirked looking him over, "I'll answer you if you'll answer me something first."

"What do you want to know?" Sherlock asked.

"Are you shagging my brother?" Harry asked.

"No," Sherlock replied.

"Why not?" She asked.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, "I am sure that you have heard John say that he is not attracted to men."

Harry's smile grew, "Well, John doesn't really see you as a man, does he?" Harry said.

"What do you mean? He sees me as a woman?"

"No. I just meant. To John, you aren't so much of a person as … I don't know, an ideal, a force of nature. Are you sure that you haven't shagged him because, I mean, it looks that way. Well never mind...what did you want to ask me?"

Sherlock folded his hands in his lap and sat forward in his seat. "Has there been a change in John? A change from the way he was before I ...was presumed dead?"

Harry stared at him with a blank, shocked expression. "You mean other than the fact that his heart shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, and he drank so much he made me look like a teetotaler? A change other than that?"

"I just wanted to know what's different."

"I thought you were good at finding out that sort of thing, mate. He's completely different now. Next question."

Sherlock frowned. He pressed his palms together below his mouth for a moment before dropping them down on his lap as he decided to take another tack with her. "Okay," He said, " what was John like as a child?"

"Smaller." Harry said, "He was a pretty good kid until he was about eleven or so. Our parents divorce was pretty messy. Anyway, as John got older, he started becoming a prat."

Sherlock paused at this revelation. "You don't seem to like John that much." Sherlock said.

"Oh I like him fine." Harry said, "I just don't like spending any time with him. John doesn't know how to have fun, you see. He can't ever just let things go. He's always telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing. He's a bit of a wet blanket, and a self-righteous one at that. I was chuffed to bits to hear that he joined the army. See his picture over there. I asked him to send me one."

Sherlock glanced up at the picture. It showed John in green and brown camouflage standing in front of a tent. Strapped to his arm was a white band with a red cross. It was only then that Sherlock realized that John never showed pictures of himself from his army days. He looked back at Harry. "Why were you glad that he joined the army?" Sherlock asked.

"Well first of all because he'd be spending loads of time far away from here. But mostly, because I thought that it was the right kind of place for a man like him. A man of his temperament."

"What kind of temperament?" Sherlock asked crisply. Sherlock found himself starting to get angry. It was uncharacteristic of him. "He's a doctor. He cares about people. He wants to help them."

"I'm not saying that he can't be nice to other people. I'm just saying that that's not the whole John if you get my drift. Surely you've noticed that face that he puts on to make everyone think that he's harmless. Do you honestly believe that he's as harmless as he looks? John is a good guy most of the time, as long as you don't run across his dark side. It was the dark part of him that I hated as a kid. The kid who put pegs in trees and got into fights. "

"John got into fights?"

"For a little guy he could really hold his own. Learned how to hide the anger. Everybody loves him now. You love him too. I can tell. God knows he loves you."

Sherlock stared at her wide eyed.

"Don't get me wrong." Harry said putting her empty glass down on the table. "I love John to death. He is my brother after all, but John was always too dark for me."

Sherlock furrowed his brow trying to match up her image of John with his own. "But John is one of the most easy-going persons that I know. He's not dark."

"If you think that, then you don't really know him." Harry said.

Sherlock flashed back to his second day with John.

"_**You have just killed a man," **Sherlock said._

_**"Yes." **John said, only then realizing that he had he had just revealed himself. He cocked his head to the side a strange tight smile crossed his face** "It's true isn't it...but he wasn't a very nice man."**_

They had walked away laughing, and John had never shown a second of remorse. Sherlock hadn't felt any remorse either, but then again Sherlock had never killed a man. How many people had John killed? He might be more likely to be named a sociopath than Sherlock. It was an odd thought.

"Oh, so you have seen it." Harry said. "I can tell by that look in your eye." Harry laughed. "Every one always thinks that I'm the wild one in the family. John acts so normal, but John likes to follow his own rules. He's nice enough most of the time, but when he's not. Watch out." Harry stopped, looking up at John's picture on the mantle, "You asked what's changed. He's not hiding it as well. That's my thought."

"Hiding what?"

"His broody antisocial nature. But I don't know if you'd notice it. He probably doesn't act that way around you."

"Why not?" Sherlock asked.

A grin crossed Harry's face,"Can you really not know these things?"

"Know what?" Sherlock asked leaning forward, eager to find the secret of what John was hiding from him.

Harry stared at him a moment, and then turned away covering a yawn. A tear rolled down her right cheek. "Excuse me." She said, "I haven't gotten enough sleep, it makes me tear up. Don't read anything into it."

"What is he hiding from me?" Sherlock said even more insistently.

Harry leaned forward to look into Sherlock's eyes. He stared back, unblinking. Harry turned away tilting her head and smiling, "Tell me Sherlock," She asked, "what feelings do you have for my brother?"

Sherlock sat up straight. He wrinkled his brow, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Do you like him?" She asked, "Do you love him? Do you fancy him?"

"I...I..." Sherlock stuttered at a loss for words.

"Maybe John has been hiding his feelings from you, but I thought with your reputation that you'd notice."

"Notice what?"

"That with you, John has no barriers. He has no resistance to you. None at all. When you were gone, he was a broken man. He wanted you back so much he pretended he was you. He went a little bit crazy. Now that you're back he's trying to fit back into the role that he had then, but he's different. Like I said, he has no barriers. You could hurt him. You could do what ever you wanted to him. He wouldn't resist you because he's just so glad that you're back."

"What do you mean? 'No barriers between us'."

Harry stood up, "You know, I really wish you had been shagging. Then perhaps he'd have learned to set limits. Give himself a safe word or something. Some way of telling you when you are getting too close, but John doesn't have one now. He's not safe, not from you."

"I don't understand." Sherlock said, "What are you trying to tell me?"

"I don't know. All I want to say is please be careful. Be careful not to unleash it in him again."

"Unleash what?"

"The Maelstrom." Harry said a look of worry clouding her face.

Sherlock furrowed his brow. _Maelstrom_? He had heard the word. It was the name of a mythical whirlpool. _What was it about the Watsons and myths._ It also meant a disordered, turbulent, tumultuous state of affairs. but what did it have to do with John?

For a brief moment Harry's face was unguarded. She looked harried, and worried, and too old for the clubbing lifestyle that she led. Sherlock could see that she too had a face that she put on for others, and he realized that one didn't have to like someone to understand how they felt inside. Maybe coming from the same womb gave you some kind of empathy whether you wanted it or not. Sherlock glanced down thinking of how Mycroft always seemed to know what Sherlock was going to ask before he asked it. He frowned.

When he looked up again, Harry was smiling. "I'm sorry Sherlock, but I really have to take a nap now. Let me get your coat." She rushed him out of the door closing it and locking it behind him.

Sherlock walked down the steps and into the street. His long legs striding along the sidewalk as he considered her words. It was just past sunset and Sherlock could see a crescent moon in the evening sky. He turned to look at it wondering how people could look at the same thing and see it so differently. When he turned back he saw John, hands in the pockets of his black coat, staring back at him from the street corner.

Sherlock walked toward him shortening the distance until they stood face to face. John moved his jaw in that way he did when he was thinking of what to say.

"Went to see my sister, did you?" John asked, "What exactly is this little case that you are on?"

"Would you believe me if I said that I was planning your birthday party?" Sherlock said.

"No." John said, "What are you on about?"

They stood facing each other like fighters in an old western.

"You followed me here." Sherlock said.

"Yeah." John replied.

"Why?" Sherlock asked.

"You always used to follow me. " John said, "Why was that?"

"I was concerned for your safety."

"You were nosy." John said.

"Is that why you are here?" Sherlock asked, "because you're nosy?"

"What did you want from Cherie?" John asked.

"The birthday story wouldn't work here would it?" Sherlock asked.

"Ha, ha, you're being funny. You're not good at it." John said tilting his head.

"Why are you moving, John?" Sherlock asked his voice becoming more intense.

"Is that what you came to see Harry about? My leaving?" John asked.

"Yes." Sherlock replied hands in his pockets as he met John's eyes.

John turned his face aside. Then noticing the moon for the first time, he took a moment to stare at it. Sherlock stepped closer looking at it too.

"Beautiful isn't it?" Sherlock said looking out of the corner of his eye at John. Then to himself he muttered, "no barriers."

"What was that?" John asked.

Sherlock and John stood side by side, half an arm length from each other. Sherlock turned his head toward John and stared at him. His eyes examining John's feet, his knees, his hands which were in his pockets, the curve of his shoulders, the slouch of his back. Sherlock walked slowly around him until he stood in front of John. The moon just visible beside sherlock's curl covered forehead.

Sherlock slid one foot forward and then another inching closer to John until the tip of his leather shoe passed between John's. John stared at Sherlock's bare neck, the top two buttons of his black shirt were undone. Then he glanced up to see Sherlock looking down at him. His eyes reflecting the blue of the sky.

"Sherlock," John said softly.

"Yes John," Sherlock replied in a whisper.

"What are you doing?" John asked.

"Testing your barriers." Sherlock said inching even closer so that the outside of his coat rubbed against John's jacket. "Harry said that you had no barriers when it came to me."

"What does that mean?" John asked his voice a low rumble barely rising above the muted sounds of distant traffic.

"I supposed that she meant proxemics. That you will let me get close to you," Sherlock replied moving his forearm to touch John's shoulder.

John gazed up into Sherlock's searching eyes and said, "She was wrong, Sherlock. If you don't step away from me right now I'll knee you in the balls."

Sherlock examined John. He recognized the slightly clenched teeth and the sideways smirk on his face. Then he stepped back several feet. John swayed back and relaxed.

"You did let me touch you though." Sherlock said, "why?"

John stood silently, the smirk growing into a smile. "I let you get away with doing weird things because I know what an annoying dick you are," he said.

"So you're saying that you like dicks?" Sherlock said.

"Shut the fuck up Sherlock we're going home."


	5. Chapter 5 Breath

_I climb out of the car and then the phone rings. I answer. Sherlock is on the line. "John," he says. _

_I ask if he's okay because his voice sounds stressed and strange. He tells me to turn around and walk back the way that I came. "No, I'm coming in," I say running across the dark pavement toward the hospital, the cab pulling away behind me._

_He raises his voice crying, "Just do as I ask! Please." Sherlock never begs. _

_Then he says that he's on the rooftop. I look up and I see him. His coat swinging in the wind. I step back surprised. I know that it's him. I'd know Sherlock anywhere. _

_"What's going on?" I ask. My breath coming faster._

_"An apology," he says "It's all true,"_

_"What?" I cry._

_"Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty."_

_I stare at him in shock. I don't know why he's saying this? Doesn't he remember that I was standing beside him every step of the way. That I saw Moriarty pretending to be Richard Brook. I stand open-mouthed, "Why are you saying this?" I ask._

_"I'm a fake," he says._

_I find myself blinking, listening as he says to tell everyone that this lie is the truth. "Okay shut up Sherlock shut up, the first time we met, the first time we met, you knew all about my sister, right?" I say._

_"Nobody could be that clever," Sherlock objects._

_"You could," I reply, and he laughs. For a moment, a brief moment, I think that he'll tell me that this is a joke. Some silly joke of his done to scare me, and it has worked. He is scaring me to the bottom of my soul._

_"I researched you, before we met." My teeth clench in anger as he goes on trying to convince me. Why is he lying to me? Doesn't he trust me enough to tell me the truth?_

_"Alright stop it now," I cry. I want to come up there and force some sense into him._

_"Stay exactly where you are, don't move!" he yells, and I hear the desperation in his voice. This is serious. I hold up my hand, and he holds up his. If only we could touch, maybe he could make me understand what was going on. Tell me why..._

_"Please will you do this for me?" Sherlock asks panic in his voice._

_"Do what?"_

_"This phone call, it's my note." His voice becomes calmer, imploring. "It's what people do don't they, leave a note?"_

_I know then that he's planning to jump, but somehow I can't admit it to myself. "Leave a note when?" I ask._

_"Goodbye John," he says. The finality of it piercing me like a stake in my heart._

_"Nope..don't," I tell him unable to understand. Unable to believe. But he has tossed the phone away. So I yell at the top of my voice, "SHERLOCK!"_

_I watch as he leans over, arms outstretched and falls. His arms waving in the air, waving as if he hopes that he could fly._

_"Sher..." I start, but he can't hear me. This is NOT happening. It can not be._

_I run. I see the body lying on the pavement unmoving. Then something hits me and I fall to the ground hard. I hear a ringing in my ears. The physical pain nothing to the aching fear in my belly as I rise to my feet and hobble across the street._

_"I'm a doctor let me come through, let me come through, please. He's my friend. He's my friend," I cry pushing my way into the crowd that has gathered around his fallen body._

_I reach out and grab his wrist. No pulse. His skin is already turning cold. Then my legs give way. I feel other's hands supporting me. Holding me up. I can see the blood on his face. The blood covering up everything that used to be my friend. They pull me away from him._

_"Please let me just..." I cry hoping that somehow I can fix him. What good is my medical training if I can't? I want to make him back the way he was...alive._

_Then I realize it. He is dead. I rise waving the others back, the trolley squeaks as Sherlock's dead body is taken away. The others leave and I am alone. A gentle rain falls and begins to wash away the blood stain on the sidewalk._

_I stand confused, the world reeling around me. I turn to find the street is gone. All that is before me is a rising blackness. I walk toward it until it swallows me and I can't see or hear or breathe. I try to scream, but I have no breath. _

John gasped opening his eyes to see the ceiling of his bedroom. His breath was ragged as if he had run a long way. He had, across that pavement, trying to get there in time to stop Sherlock. In time to catch him. John's eyes well with tears. He sheds them now, the tears that he didn't shed then. His cheek is wet with them. He is unable to stop them.

John stretched his arms finding something in his bed. He turned and saw beside him Sherlock's sleeping face. His eyes closed. His mouth open. His curls smashed against the pillow. His chest rising and falling in the gentle surety of sleep. Alive. _"He is here ...alive." _John thought.

A smile touched John's lips, "Sherlock," he said involuntarily, joy filling him. He reached out with his right hand and touched Sherlock's chest proving to himself that this was no vision. His left hand fell on Sherlock's cheek.

Sherlock's eyes opened. They glowed golden in the muted light of the darkened room.

John couldn't hide from Sherlock the unbridled joy that he felt to have him back. The tears began to fall again rolling across his face and dripping off of his nose to soak his pillow.

Sherlock's breath caught. His arm moved and he grasped John's forearm. The forearm of the hand that was pressed against his heart. For a moment outside of time, they lay there together, allowing themselves to feel for each other. Allowing themselves to show how much the other meant to them.

Then John closed his eyes and pulled away from Sherlock, rolling over to face the door. Sherlock reached out his hand to touch John's shoulder, but he pulled it back, unable to go the extra half inch needed to touch him.

"John. Are you alright?" Sherlock said his voice slightly slurred from having just woken.

John lifted his hand to his face brushing away a tear. He couldn't speak yet. His tongue was in his throat.

"Did you have a bad dream?" Sherlock asked.

Silence fell between them, and they lay awake in the bubble of their own thoughts. Together but separate as they were every day of their lives.

Finally the silence was broken by John's words. "It was just a magic trick," he whispered, "That's what you told me. It's a trick." A chuckle escaped his lips. "Were you trying to tell me not to worry?"

"Yes," Sherlock said to his back.

"But you were still crying."

"Yes," Sherlock replied.

"Sherlock," John asked his voice hesitant, "Did you miss me?"

"Yes!" Sherlock said his voice deep with emotion, and he finally did touch John's back pressing against it with the tip of his middle finger before resting his hand on John's shoulder.

John's eyes clenched together tightly. He held back a sob that turned into a smile, and then he said so silently that it was on the edge of even Sherlock's excellent hearing, "I missed you too."

Sherlock pressed his hand to John's back. He listened as John's breath passed from _tremolo_ to _legato _and on to true sleep.

Sherlock sighed then raising his hand to touch his lips. _"This won't be a quick fix like John's psychosomatic limp."_ He thought, _"The scars are too deep._" Sherlock stayed beside John, guarding his dreams until the morning light streamed through his bedroom window.


	6. Chapter 6 Stories

The next morning John woke as sunlight streamed across his face. He remembered all that had passed the night before. He reached out, but no one else was in the bed. Turning he found on his pillow a single black hair which told him that last night had not been a dream.

He walked down the stairs and into the kitchen to find Sherlock sitting at the table reading the newspaper. He looked up at John, staring directly into his eyes before turning back to the page. "Good Morning, John," he said.

"Morning," John replied passing through on his way to the bathroom. He returned to find Sherlock putting on his coat.

"I have an errand to run. Breakfast is on the table," he said pausing once more to look at John before hurrying down the stairs. John saw that Sherlock had fixed him breakfast. There was a plate of bacon and eggs, a glass of milk, a cup of steaming coffee and the newspaper neatly folded to his favorite section. It was much more attention than Sherlock normally gave him. John smiled. In truth, "Good Morning, John," would have been enough to satisfy him. He sat down and started in on the eggs.

Lestrade had just left a planning meeting and was about to go through some of his cases when Sherlock walked into his office.

"Lestrade, I need to talk to you," he said.

Lestrade put down the folder that he had been just about to open, "Well good morning, Sherlock. What brings you to my office so early? Actually, I'm glad you're here, there are a few cases that I'd like you to look at."

Sherlock raised a hand to stop him. "Not now. I've got a problem that I need to solve first."

"A problem, not a case?" Lestrade said tilting his head to the side as he looked up at Sherlock who stood stiffly with his hands in his pockets. "What exactly do you want to know?"

"John," Sherlock said, "When I was away, what happened to John?"

Lestrade smirked, "About bloody time you did something," he said rising from his chair and closing his door and window blinds to give them privacy. "Have a seat."

Sherlock lowered himself onto the green padded seat of the metal office chair. He sat on the edge leaning forward. "What did you mean by that? What did you expect me to do?"

"I expected that you'd come see me the first week that you got back. I expected that you'd want to know what was going on with your best friend."

"And what was going on?" Sherlock asked.

Lestrade smiled and moved his chair out from behind his desk so he had an unobstructed view of Sherlock. "First Sherlock," he said, "Why don't you tell me why this is so urgent now when you've waited months to come see me?"

Sherlock clasped his hands on his knees and looked down. "John says that he wants to move."

"So, you two are moving? Where too?"

"No," Sherlock said, "John doesn't want me to move with him. He's moving away from me."

A confused expression crossed Lestrade's face, "But why?"

"That's what I've come to ask you about," Sherlock said. "I found this in his coat pocket last night."

Sherlock put a card down on the table. It was a business card for an estate agent. a time, 2:30pm, was scribbled on the back.

"I thought that perhaps he wasn't serious, but now I find that he is acting on his promise to leave."

"And you don't want him to."

"Obviously not," Sherlock replied.

"Have you tried talking to him? Asking him why he wants to leave?"

"He says simply that he has a right to leave if he wants too."

"So, no explanation. Are you sure that he didn't say why?" Lestrade asked pulling out a pencil and gnawing on the end.

"No, and I can't imagine why he would want to leave."

"I can imagine hundreds of reasons," Lestrade countered, "but they would be why I couldn't stand to live with you. John was always more tolerant."

"Please," Sherlock implored in a tone that made Lestrade stare. "Tell me what happened while I was away."

Lestrade nodded, and then he got up to pour himself a cup of coffee from a pot near the window. Sherlock shook his head to an offered cup. He sat back down and took a sip before beginning.

"Well, after the 'suicide', we were all pretty broken up, but no one more than John. He lived in your flat for a few weeks, and then he said that the memories were too painful, so he moved in with his sister for a bit before getting a little place somewhere that specialized in rooms for former military.

He was in mourning for you. Wore black every day for over a year. I tried to keep an eye on him, but ... well. We don't really interact that much, not since you weren't going on cases anymore. I met him once, about six months after. He had lost a lot of weight. He was having financial problems. Had trouble keeping up with his rent as his pension wasn't enough. He was making up the difference by only eating every other day."

Sherlock sat up. "Why should that be? I left a note. Mycroft should have taken care of him financially."

Lestrade sighed and shook his head, "You know John," he said, "He's too proud to take money for doing nothing. He threw that money back in Mycroft's face. Called it 'blood money'. Said that Mycroft was paying him off to get rid of his guilt. I didn't understand how Mycroft could be responsible for your death, but John felt that way. At least that's what he told me. I asked him if I could help. He let me buy him lunch and told me to keep an eye out for any opportunities. A friend of his found him the clinic job that he works at now."

"But there's more that you're not telling me," Sherlock said, his mouth in a frown.

Lestrade nodded, "I don't know how you know, but it's true. I started worrying about him, so I asked a few of my officers to follow him when they had the time, as a favor to me, to see if he was alright. They said that he would walk all night in the shadiest of neighborhoods. Sometimes they'd have to call off pursuit to call in a crime that they saw in progress. A few times, they had to take him home after he had been kicked out of a bar for being drunk and fighting."

"Fighting? John?"

"Apparently. And once we found him passed out in his flat. He hadn't shown up for work and they had called the landlady. I had given her my number and told her to call me if there was any trouble. He had overdosed on sleeping pills. He said that it was an accident, but I insisted after that that he get counseling, or I would list it as a suicide attempt and that would have his medical license called into question. "

"Why did no one tell me this?" Sherlock asked his brows raised in surprise, clouds crossing his face.

"You didn't ask," Lestrade said, "Besides, I supposed that John would tell you. You came to tell me that you were alive, and the next day you and John were living together again. I figured with the two of you being so close, that you'd talk about your experiences and feelings. Don't you?"

"No. We don't" Sherlock said.

"Then maybe you ought to," Lestrade said putting his coffee down and reaching out to touch the arm of Sherlock's coat. "Look. Maybe the two of you should consider marriage counseling. It did wonders for me and the wife."

Sherlock stood up suddenly. "Is there anything more?" he asked.

Lestrade threw up his hands and sat back in his chair crossing his legs. "You might try Mrs Hudson. I hear she bailed him out of jail a few times when he was taken in for being drunk and disorderly."

Sherlock nodded and turned sharply on his heel leaving Lestrade's office.

"You're welcome!" Lestrade called out of the door after him, before going back his desk to read his files.

_ ..._..._...

"Come in dear," Mrs Hudson said giving Sherlock half a hug as she ushered him into her flat. He opened the refrigerator digging around for a snack before sitting down at her table. She turned on the kettle and then carefully lowered herself into a chair. Her hip had gotten worse since Sherlock had been away, and she didn't come up to visit the boys as much as she used to because she found the stairs difficult.

"Well I see you've finally gotten some sense and come to talk to me about your little problem with John."

"I'd hardly call it little," Sherlock said absentmindedly rearranging the salt and pepper shakers on Mrs Hudson's table.

"I know that it seems that way to you, but every problem seems big when you're young, dear," she said patting his shoulder. "It was a poor thing you did to that boy pretending to die. A poor thing that you did to me. And it was quite a shock you coming back, though we're glad of it. Don't mistake that, but old people like me can't take too many shocks in their lives, and John's got an old-fashioned heart. It was hard on him too.

"For two years straight, you were inseparable, and then one day you're gone. He didn't know what to do with himself, poor boy."

"What happened?" Sherlock asked.

"What always happens. He was in shock for a while, and then he tried to escape by drinking. Eventually he came to some kind of acceptance, and then you came back. He's happy, oh yes, he's very happy to see you, but you can't expect that people will just stop and wait for you to return. Life goes on."

Sherlock slouched forward uncharacteristically placing his forehead on the table. "What should I do?" he asked her bashing his head against the tabletop until Mrs Hudson placed a hand on his hair and stroked it like she would a child.

"Now you know that no matter what he says, there's no place he'd rather be than by your side," Mrs Hudson said reassuringly, "You just have to remind him of that."

The tea kettle whistled, and Mrs Hudson rose to brew a pot of tea. "Now sit up properly. A cup of tea will set you right, and I think I may have some of those lemon biscuits that you like so much." Sherlock sat up and smiled.


	7. Chapter 7 Icarus

After a nice tea with Mrs Hudson, Sherlock walked back upstairs to find John in his chair reading again.

Sherlock walked over and sat down watching as John turned a page. What Sherlock had said to Lestrade was true. He and John didn't talk. John hadn't said anything to Sherlock about his troubles, about his months of poverty, but peering over the top of his hands at John, Sherlock could see the signs. The way that John's clothes hung a little more loosely than they should. A hollowness under his cheeks. John had a few more white hairs than he had before. His temples were definitely silvering. The skin under his eyes were baggy, and there were wrinkles on his brow.

Harry had been correct. John was different. Not _completely different_ as she had said, but he had changed. He wasn't the carefree, happy, joking man that he had been before. He still joked. He still smiled, but there was something sad in John's eyes now. An expression that Sherlock didn't understand, and Sherlock couldn't stand not understanding.

"John," Sherlock said, "What are you reading now? Still with the minotaur?"

John looked up. His book resting on his crossed legs. "It's the same book, but I'm at another part."

"What's happening?" Sherlock asked.

John looked at Sherlock's expectant expression and leaned his head on his cheek. "Now I'm reading about Daedelus and Icarus."

"Daedelus, you mentioned his name before. He made the Labyrinth, right?"

"Yes."

"Tell me," Sherlock said.

"Are you really interested?"

"I'm interested in what interests you," Sherlock said.

John pursed his lips and blinked his eyes, "Okay. " He said, "So the King of Crete had imprisoned Daedelus and his son Icarus in a tower. He wasn't ever going to release them, but Daedelus was clever, he found a way to escape. They gathered the feathers from birds and built wings so that they could fly away."

Sherlock raised his hand and opened his mouth about to mention how the physics would not work, but one look from John made him change his mind.

"The feathers were held together with candle wax. Daedelus warned his son not to fly too low because the salt water could weigh down the feathers and he would fall into the sea. He also told him not to fly too high because the wax would melt and the wings would fall apart. Icarus was so happy to be able to fly. He was so happy that he flew too near the sun and the wax melted. He fell into the sea and drowned."

"And what does this story mean?" Sherlock asked.

"What do you mean '_What does it mean?_' " John replied.

"I am supposing that like many stories of this type it has a moral, because it certainly is not meant to be taken literally. It ignores the normal drop of temperature that occurs with increasing altitude, unless the temperature inversion is the point of the story. Is it?"

"No. I don't think so," John said, "The moral is probably a warning against hubris, pride. Or perhaps it's a warning against feeling too much. Because if you can soar that high, there is so much further for you to fall."

"John," Sherlock asked hesitantly, "Your nightmares, how long have you had them?"

John closed his book. "Ever since the night that you ...that you died."

"They haven't stopped." It wasn't a question.

"I thought that they had gone away but after that time in the bank when I almost..."

"When you almost, what?"

"When I almost choked you to death like that robber with brain damage. I don't know what came over me. I never used to believe in berserker rage before, but ... I could have seriously hurt you. I'm sorry Sherlock."

"It's okay John. I knew that you wouldn't hurt me," Sherlock said.

"How could you know? I didn't even know that," John asked.

"I knew that you wouldn't do that, because that's not like you."

"How do you know what's like me anymore?" John said with a touch of bitterness in his voice. "You were away for a long time."

"I know. I'm sorry."

John pursed his lips together as if he was trying to hold something back and failing. "Couldn't you have. Somewhere in your travels. Couldn't you have sent some sort of word. Told me that you were alive?" John's eyes bored into Sherlock's the edges turned down, his brow knitting briefly, "Couldn't you have trusted me to keep your secret."

"It wasn't about trust, John."

"Then what the hell was it about!?" John spat out before closing his lips and glancing away. "We were friends. Best friends. More than friends. I woke up every day happy that we were going to do things together, solve cases. I thought I knew you. And then you jumped, and it made no sense. It made... no... logical... sense. I tried to understand, but ... And then you came back. And I came here to be with you. But...You could have told me. You should have told me that you were alive."

"I wanted to," Sherlock said. "But it would have put you in danger. Moriarty's men were watching you. If you changed the way you acted, changed your schedule, they could have guessed."

"Damn it Sherlock! I went through hell!" John yelled his voice echoing off the walls of the room.

"The truth is, if you're so damn smart, why couldn't you have gotten a message to me? You just didn't care enough to do it. " John stood up dropping his book on the table. "Look Sherlock, I appreciate that you're concerned about me, but I don't need your help. I'm going to bed, and I think that I'm old enough to sleep by myself now, so goodnight." John strode across the room and up the stairs.

Sherlock stood listening to John's rapid footfalls. To the sound of his door slamming and locking. John thought that he didn't trust him. John thought that he didn't care about him. How could he be so wrong?

Everything that Sherlock had done from the moment that he had talked to Molly, from the moment that he had arranged the false call that sent John to Mrs Hudson, everything that he had done had been for him.

Sherlock needed to convince John that he did trust him. But how? Sherlock had never felt at such as loss before. Feelings were something that he had always avoided. He had called them the fly in the ointment, the grit on the lens, a weakness, and yet. It was his feelings for John that had kept him going through the last year.

He had spent that year rooting out every remnant of Moriarty's organization. There were so many times when he had just wanted to give up. So many times when the only hope that had sustained him was the dream of a happy life with John: Waiting for three weeks outside of a warehouse in Sicily for a certain operative to lead him to Moran's top assistant, flirting with a French receptionist in order to get five minutes in one of Moriarty's agent's offices, and worst of all standing behind the tree in the graveyard watching as John broke down in front of his tombstone.

He had survived those times by reminding himself that this was only temporary. That when he was finished, finally finished, that he and John could go back to the way that they had been before, together. Without those feelings, without the certainty of the reward at the end, Sherlock could never have resisted rushing out from behind that tree to tell John that he was alive, to tell John that everything would be okay.

Yet John felt that not rushing out was proof that he didn't trust him. Sherlock simply stood staring at John's chair. "I did it for you," he said to the empty seat, but it gave him no answer.


	8. Chapter 8 Fighting

John shook hands with the estate agent and walked through the doorway and down the stairs to the street. He pushed his way through the revolving door, turning to walk toward the station. As he rounded the corner, he saw a familiar tall figure in a long coat standing in front of him.

"Sherlock," he said, "fancy meeting you here. You've been following me again."

"You followed me before. It seemed only polite to return the favor."

John walked around Sherlock and kept going. Sherlock turned and ran to keep pace with him. "So are you looking at new flats? I like a good sized kitchen for my experiments."

"I'm not getting the flat for you, Sherlock," John said walking briskly his arms swinging at his side as he crumpled the advert pages in his hand.

Sherlock reached out taking the papers. John turned to stare at him, "But these are all one bedroom!" Sherlock proclaimed. "I know that we've been sleeping together recently, but I would appreciate my own room."

John glared, snatching the papers back. "Sherlock, what is it that you think you are doing? I told you that I was moving, so I'm out looking at flats."

"Can I come along?" Sherlock asked hopefully bouncing on the balls of his feet like a puppy.

"Fine. Do whatever you want," John said waving his hand behind him as he walked on. Sherlock rushed after John.

"It's just if we're going to move, I want to..."

John turned to face him, "Sherlock, _we_ are not moving anywhere. _I_ am moving to a new flat."

"But that can't be," Sherlock said.

"Why not?"

"Because..." Sherlock leaned over John motioning with his finger, "because you need me."

"I need you?" John looked at him skeptically.

"Yes. You need me. Without me, you'd be bored in a week."

"You're the one who gets bored," John said and resumed walking.

"Yes, I would get bored without you. But you'll be bored just treating skinned knees. Where's the excitement in that?"

John turned and clapped his hands together. "I'm not saying that I won't visit or do cases with you, I'm just not living with you anymore."

"But you like living with me," Sherlock insisted.

"And what makes you think that?" John asked.

"Your blog. You document dozens of incidents where interesting and exciting things happen at our flat."

"I also have documented how I was kidnapped, bombed, and almost poisoned there. I think that your argument is weak."

John turned to take a short cut down an alley. Sherlock ran in front of him blocking his way.

"Sherlock!" John said in a threatening voice, "I don't feel like playing with you right now, so get out of my way."

"Or what?" Sherlock said holding his ground.

"Move out of my way, or I'll make you move," John said his eyes narrowing.

"Come now John, I am taller than you, and I've had martial arts training so..."

John rushed forward grabbing Sherlock around the waist with both arms and tackling him so that he fell down onto the pavement knocking the wind out of him.

John rose on his knees above Sherlock who lay flat on the ground. "Don't underestimate me Sherlock. You keep forgetting that I was a soldier. I could kill you with my bare..."

Sherlock swung his leg up and around knocking John to the ground and pinning him there. He scrambled up pushing John down on his face and twisting his arm up behind his back.

"Don't _you_ forget that I have a black belt in _Taekwando_," Sherlock said as he held John's face against the pavement, his arm in an uncomfortable twist.

"Ouch Sherlock," John said. "Can't you loosen it a little? That hurts."

Sherlock loosened John's arm. John sat up on his heels breathing heavily as he rubbed his shoulder. Sherlock sat behind him one hand still clasping his wrist. Suddenly John rose to his knees, pulling his arm out of Sherlock's grasp and elbowing him hard in the nose.

Sherlock fell to the ground, his hand covering his face.

John stood bouncing on his feet like a boxer. Sherlock sat on the pavement clasping his nose which had begun to bleed.

"You got me right in the nose," Sherlock said aloud, and then he mumbled to himself "I guess you don't love me anymore."

John looked down at Sherlock. Then he sighed and lowered his arms. "Sorry," John said reaching out to offer Sherlock his hand, but Sherlock spun on the ground kicking John's feet from under him with a sweep of his legs. John fell hard onto his side.

Sherlock jumped onto John's chest pinning him to the ground with a wrestling move so that John couldn't move his hands. John relaxed against the ground in apparent surrender before thrusting his head forward hard to hit Sherlock's nose again.

Sherlock cried out, falling backwards as John rose to his feet. Sherlock also climbed to his feet holding one hand to his nose.

John's face held an awkward half smile, the same expression Sherlock had seen in the parking lot after the case that John had named "A study in pink". Sherlock raised an arm to block John's attack, but he undercut him punching Sherlock in the abdomen five times hard before other arms pulled him back grabbing his hands behind his body and cuffing them together. Someone had called the police.

Sherlock also was cuffed, but only by one hand. His other hand held a handkerchief which he used to mop up the blood flowing from his nose.

Forty minutes later. Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade stood before them with his arms crossed glaring through the bars of the jail cell, a wicked smile on his face. "So this is how you communicate?" he said, "I much prefer marriage counseling."

"Lestrade?" Sherlock said, "Let us out of here. We're not prosecuting each other, so there's no one to charge us."

"And there you're wrong," Lestrade said, "Fighting on the street like common ruffians. You were disturbing the peace. Now you Sherlock can go, but John here...this is not his first offense, we're going to have to hold him till morning. "

You mean that John has to stay here?" Sherlock asked.

"Yes," Lestrade said, "Until morning."

"He's not drunk," Sherlock countered.

"Hey, I don't make the rules," Lestrade said unlocking the door to let Sherlock out. John resignedly sat on the edge of the metal bench.

"I'm staying," Sherlock said.

"What?" Lestrade said surprised.

"If John can't leave, I'll stay here with him."

"Don't be ridiculous, Sherlock. Go home," John added.

Sherlock turned toward him, "I'm not going, not without you."

"Well, if that's the way that you want it," Lestrade said closing the door on the two of them with a click. "Have a good night boys." He walked out chuckling to himself.

Sherlock moved to the other side of the cell, and sat across from John. They glanced past each other trying not to stare, but there was nothing else in the cell to do. Sherlock's coat and phone had been taken, as had John's.

John looked around the empty cell and said, "I question the logic of putting two people who were fighting each other in the same cell."

"Do you plan to attack me?" Sherlock asked

John laughed once, "No. Probably not," he said.

They continued to not look at each other. The silence growing in the room until they found themselves unconsciously uncontrollably staring into each other's eyes. John smiled and then lay back in his bunk.

"John," Sherlock began, "Lestrade told me that you used to get into fights."

John chuckled raising his hand to his head to shield his eyes from the light. "Is this a question?" he asked.

"I don't remember you getting into fights when we first lived together."

"We fought all the time. Remember The Gollum?" John replied.

"I mean, outside of our work," Sherlock said.

"Well there wasn't really much outside of our work back then was there?" John said, "We were always busy. "

"And before, when you were younger?"

John rolled up putting his feet back onto the floor as he looked at Sherlock, "You never cared about my life before I met you. You never asked. Why the new interest?"

"Because I want to know," Sherlock said with quiet intensity, "Because I need to know about what's happening to you now."

"Sherlock, I'm a grown man, I..." Then he shook his head and lay back down on the bunk. "Time will pass faster, Sherlock, if we just go to sleep."

"You can't move out, John," Sherlock insisted.

"Why not?"

"Because you don't want to leave."

John smiled, "I don't?"

"I know that you don't. Your medical books. That stack of them that you keep in your room. You should be putting them in boxes, but you haven't bought any boxes."

"Just haven't gotten around to it."

"Your favorite Chinese noodle place is around the corner from Baker street. You don't want to miss that."

"I'll eat there when I come to visit you," John said, "I told you before, I have every right to move if I want to."

"I'm not saying you don't have a right to move," Sherlock said, "I'm saying that ... I don't want you to move."

John turned his head toward Sherlock.

"You don't want me to move," he repeated.

"No John. I...want you to stay."

A frown started to build on John's face, "Why?"

"Because..." Sherlock rocked forward on the edge of his seat clasping his hands, "life's just no fun without you."

John smiled, then his face became cold. " Nice, nice Sherlock. I'm glad that you think so."

Sherlock noticed the way that John clenched his fists. The furrows on his brow. "Why does this anger you?" he asked. "I thought that you would want to hear that I value your company."

John closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. Then he blew out a breath lying on his back and covering his eyes with his hands.

"You are angry. " Sherlock said to John's reclining figure, "I can tell by the way you clench your teeth, that and my bruised ribs, quite a punch you have there. "

John smiled. "I keep telling you, that I killed people for a living."

"Yes John, I've always wanted to ask you, how many people have you killed?"

"I don't remember," he said.

"Liar," Sherlock replied.

"Good night, Sherlock," John said before rolling over to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9 Daedalus

It was dark outside the window of Lestrade's office when John and Sherlock were ushered in. Lestrade sat behind the table a cold, half-filled cup of coffee sat on his desk next to a stack of photographs. The uniformed officer closed the door as he left.

"Sit down." Lestrade said motioning to the chairs.

John sat but Sherlock continued to stand. " I thought that John wasn't to be released 'til morning. It isn't morning yet, so what's going on?"

"I need you", Lestrade said, "so the lesson in public citizenship will have to wait."

"What's the problem?" John asked.

"We're working on a very sensitive project. You know about the human rights trial going on this week."

"Human rights?" Sherlock asked obviously unaware.

"Yes, of course." John said.

"I haven't heard of it." Sherlock said.

"It's been in the papers! On the front page no less." John said exasperated.

"I read the obituaries, the want ads, and the crime reports. All the rest is inconsequential." Sherlock replied.

"African country, General defected. He's testifying against the dictator there, we've got him in the highest security imaginable, but some of his evidence was in a suitcase and ..."

"It's been stolen." Sherlock finished for him.

"The car that it was in was stolen." Lestrade clarified, "Our evidence suggests that it was a local job, just a coincidence that it was that car, but we need that evidence back and soon. It's only a matter of time before the assassins sent after the general find it and destroy it."

"So what can we do?" John asked.

"The homeless network." Sherlock said, "I can spread the word, see if anyone's seen the car."

"Exactly." Lestrade said, "Can you do it?"

"How long has the suitcase been missing?" Sherlock asked.

"About two hours." Lestrade said.

"You should have called us earlier. Give me a description of the case and the car and where it was last seen."

"I've anticipated you. It's all here." Lestrade said pulling a folder off of the table and handing it to Sherlock. "Any help you can give us would be appreciated, and it will help some very oppressed people as well."

"Irrelevant." Sherlock said taking the case. "Let's go John."

John stood up, "Greg." He said shaking his hand before leaving.

The two of them walked out of New Scotland Yard together. Sherlock hailed a cab. "I've got a few places to stop, then we can try Riverside."

"Try whatever you want, Sherlock, I'm going home." John said.

"Home, but aren't you going to help me on this case?"

"Sherlock," John said, "I have work tomorrow. After work, I'll be happy to run around London with you, but you don't need me for this part. It's just running around slipping twenty pound notes in pockets. I'll be better for a good night's sleep."

"Will you sleep?" Sherlock asked concerned.

John paused and became still. A gentle smile crossed on his face. "I haven't had a nightmare since... then" John said, "I expect that I'll sleep just fine tonight."

The cab pulled up outside 221B and John got out. Sherlock remained inside. John leaned back into the cab asking, "When do you expect to come home?"

"Not until morning." He said, "Unless we find it before then."

"Ah well, good night." John said closing the door and walking up the stairs to enter the flat.

When Sherlock returned in the morning, John had already left for work. Sherlock took a shower and then came into the living room laying his phone on the table as he waited for a call. Sherlock picked up John's book of myths and lying down on the couch he began to read.

That evening, John came home to an empty flat. He had just sat down to rest when his phone rang.

"Hello." John said.

"John!" Sherlock called, "I have a lead. Meet me at this address in ten minutes, it's near the flat so you can walk."

"But Sherlock?" John began. Sherlock had already cut the connection. John sighed, pushed himself up and put on his coat.

John watched as Sherlock exchanged a word with a bearded man in a coat so old that any color it had once had was worn to grey. He walked back toward John wiping his hand with his handkerchief.

"What is it?" John asked.

"The plates were changed, but it's the same car." Sherlock said, " It's parked just a few blocks away. Come along."

Sherlock rushed ahead his coat streaming behind him. John followed. Just as they were approaching the car, it started to drive away. Sherlock took a picture with his phone and sent it to Lestrade along with the new plate number.

"Do you think the assassins have it?" John asked.

"No," Sherlock replied. "They would have taken the case and left the car. Also they would probably shoot at us. Look, they turned right!" Sherlock said, "There's construction. We can catch them if we run."

"But Lestrade can..." John said to Sherlock's retreating back. He rushed after him.

Sherlock ran through alley after alley before pulling down a fire escape and climbing to the top of a building. John followed. Sherlock ran jumping from rooftop to rooftop, with John some paces behind. As he leaped, a tile slid beneath him so that he fell short. He plunged into a darkened alley just barely catching the edge of the other roof with one hand.

"Sherlock!" John yelled before rushing ahead and jumping across to the other roof. He turned and slid to the edge, reaching down to grab Sherlock's arm. John dragged Sherlock up onto the roof. They fell on the graveled surface side by side breathing heavily, arms locked in John's visor-like grip.

"John, John, you can let go now." Sherlock said looking into John's face which had gone white as a sheet. Sherlock pried his hand away finger by finger.

"What you did...thank you." Sherlock said sitting on the rough rooftop. John turned away from Sherlock his hand over his face. "You aren't still mad are you?" Sherlock asked to his back before walking around and kneeling in front of John.

John looked up at Sherlock. Wet tracks covered his cheeks. He was crying. He turned his head. "I didn't want you to see me this way." John said, " A grown man crying like a child."

"John." Sherlock asked, "What's wrong?"

John rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "Who would believe that I was a soldier or a doctor even when I keep breaking down like this."

Sherlock reached out his hand but not knowing how to help he pulled it back, folding his hands together. "What's wrong John?" he asked, " Are you hurt?"

John laughed. "Am I hurt?" he said. "Sherlock, you almost died, for real this time. It was a miracle that you were able to catch that ledge and hold on. Weren't you even the least bit upset?"

"Why should I have been?" Sherlock asked, "I knew that you would save me."

John smiled, new streaks marking his cheeks, "Sherlock, you really are amazing. Sometimes you are callous and selfish and act as if you have no heart, and other times you say things that make me think that you are as innocent as a child. I can't tell you how glad I am that you're back."

"Can I ask you a question then?" Sherlock said earnestly.

"What do you want to know?" John asked.

"Why are you really moving?"

John stood up looking across the empty rooftops at the city surrounding them. He said, "It's complicated."

Sherlock stood and stared waiting for his answer. Just then Sherlock's phone beeped. He looked down, "Lestrade has the car. They found the case intact. That's solved. Should we talk about this over dinner?"

"No," John said walking across the roof and sitting on a raised vent cover. "I'd rather talk here. The breeze is nice and I won't be ready to jump anywhere for at least fifteen minutes."

Sherlock sat on the vent beside John, their shoulders touching. John glanced away from Sherlock as he talked. "A doctor, especially a medical doctor, has to learn to be detached about their work. Sometimes you can save someone, sometimes you can't. You can't take it personally or the emotions will kill you. I've had a man die under my hand, and I just went on to the next person. I don't even remember his name. The ability to stay detached emotionally is useful. You do it naturally, Sherlock, perhaps a little too well. I was able to do it too, until...until you fell.

"You see, when I think of you getting hurt or dying. I'm terrified. I can't control myself. Ever since you came back, I've had uncontrollable mood swings. Sometimes, like now I'm so terribly afraid, and then I'm ecstatic that you're alright. It's too much. It seems that I can't be detached around you."

"You're not detached, what does that mean, that you're attached?" Sherlock asked.

John looked up at the cloud covered sky. "Living with you again. It's brought out all these emotions that I had learned to repress. It's taken months for me to come to some kind of peace with your death, and now that I find that you are alive..." John smiled and cried at the same time.

"And when something like this happens, when I almost lose you again, I realize how impossible it would be for me without you."

"But John, this should make you want to stay with me, why do you want to move?"

"I told you that it was complicated." John said.

Sherlock turned so that his knee touched John's. "Explain. Explain to me how moving out makes any kind of logical sense."

John brushed his fingers through his hair and looked into Sherlock's eyes. They stared at each other. The tear streaks drying on John's face. "I'm like Icarus." John said. "If I fly too close to you, my wings melt and I fall into the sea." John turned his face away. "But also like him, if I'm completely without you I get depressed and that's no good either. Tears are salt water after all. I need to find the middle ground like Daedelus. That's the only way to survive this thing that I'm going through."

"And the middle ground is moving to another flat?"

"Yes." John said. "I'll do what I've been doing, what helps me cope, and occasionally I'll come over help with a case or two. Take the middle path until I learn how to be more detached about you."

"What if you never feel detached." Sherlock asked, "What if you get emotional whenever something bad happens to me?"

"Then I guess I'll just have to stay away." John said.

"No." Sherlock said his voice cracking.

"No?"

"No, you can't. What kind of life can you have playing it safe all the time? We aren't meant to be mediocre John. We are supposed to soar." Sherlock took John's hand in his. "Moriarty meant to separate us. Are you going to let him win? Why have I been working and fighting for the last year and a half if not to be with you again."

For a moment, John looked won over, then he pulled his hand away. "I feel good now, but I'll have dropped by the time we get back to the flat. I'm sorry Sherlock. I can't go on like this. We had better go now. Lestrade will call soon."

John stood and started looking around the roof for an exit. He found a door just as Sherlock's phone rang.

"No, we're not home now." Sherlock told Lestrade, "Call me tomorrow." he said turning to see the roof door slam as John walked away.


	10. Chapter 10 Discovery

Sherlock sat in his chair, his knees pulled up to his chest, thinking. John moved around the flat quietly, walking on eggshells around Sherlock who in his own way was disturbed. He couldn't find a solution to the problem that John had posed. "Make me not feel."

When Sherlock was younger, he had faced the same problem. Other children had looked at him with dislike and he had felt sad. Sometimes the feelings had almost overwhelmed him. He begged to be allowed not to go to school, but his parents did not agree. He'd have to learn to face people sooner or later. A Holmes lived in the real world, he had to find his peace however he could.

Mycroft had offered his solution. Don't trust them, don't seek their approval, don't care about them. He pretended to be like them,but somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought that they weren't real. They were just pieces on a chess board. They didn't really feel. They didn't really require our concern for their welfare except on an abstract level. Sherlock never agreed with Mycroft's philosophy. He found it too cold and largely inaccurate.

The truth was that the Holmes family had never lived in the real world. They always created the world that they wanted around them, except now, Sherlock was failing dismally.

He hadn't known what he had wanted in life until he met John. Once he had divorced himself from his desire for acceptance he had pursued intellectual challenge. Science was nice, but it was just something that he did for fun. In truth Sherlock dreaded the tedious repetitive precision required to fully document and prove a hypothesis. He did quick, but thorough experiments and documented them as monographs without going through a formal review or presenting at conferences. In science, he was a dedicated dabbler.

But even as a youth, crime had fascinated him. Carl Powers murder being his first. Despite all of the trouble that it had caused, Sherlock was glad to have met Moriarty. Glad because he had given him a chance to solve the first mystery that had frustrated him so long ago. The mystery that had paved the way for his subsequent fame and fall.

In that sense, he and Moriarty had been the same. Both loved knowing. Sherlock remembered on the rooftop how upset Moriarty had been when he thought that he didn't know something, "What did I miss?" he asked worrying him like a crow seeking to retrieve a piece of bread dropped into a inaccessible grating. Neither of them could stand not knowing the answer. Sherlock had thought that this was what made him special. His drive to know, and yet what had it given Moriarty except a hopeless fatality. His need to find the answer to existence had led to his suicide. Perhaps in the end he had sought to solve the problem of what happened to the intellect after death.

But Moriarty's death had answered another question for Sherlock. It had told him what it was like to die without friends. Sherlock had traveled the world in search of people who knew Moriarty. Some of them had admired his intellect, some of them had coveted his power, some had been fascinated with his dangerous personality, but none of them had been his friend. When he was gone, they forgot him in search of their own interests, or in pursuit of others to take his place. But John had missed Sherlock, and Sherlock had known that no matter where in the world he went, no matter what he did, that he had a home to go to, and it wasn't this flat. His home was John.

Sherlock looked up realizing as he glanced at the clock that he had been thinking for hours. It had seemed only minutes since he had sat down, but his legs were stiff, so he stood and shook them out, looking around the room for him. Sherlock hadn't found an answer for John's problem, but he had clarified his own. That a life of pure intellect was a cold life without a friend to share it with.

The door opened and John came in wearing his coat and carrying a shopping bag containing milk and tea.

"Ah, you're up." John said.

Sherlock looked at John, his friend. "John," he said "I..." Then his phone rang. Sherlock ignored it. "John."

"Aren't you going to answer that?" John asked.

Sherlock clicked the button angrily, "What do you want, Lestrade?" he said.

Lestrade replied in a clipped tone. "I need you both NOW. I'm texting the address."

"Do we have a case?" John asked.

"Yes, we have a case. Let's go." Sherlock replied sighing as he walked across the room to get his coat.


	11. Chapter 11 Back to work

Donovan met them at an unmarked door in the back of a hotel and showed them through three layers of security before leaving them with Lestrade. He stood alone in a carpeted hallway impatiently waiting for them.

"At last!", he said as John and Sherlock arrived. The guards closed the doors behind them.

"What is it?" Sherlock asked.

"The general that I was telling you about. This is where we were keeping him." Lestrade began.

"Were?" John asked, "Is he missing?"

"Worse than that." Lestrade opened the door to the suite to reveal a room with a green carpet and gold chairs, and on the carpet, a body, "He's dead."

John walked over to the body and put a hand to his neck.

"How long?" Sherlock asked.

"Less than an hour." Lestrade replied. "We've been keeping it quiet in the hopes that we can discover the culprits before they flee the area. We are certain that the kind of person employed to do this job will not leave until they are certain that they have succeeded."

John looked up, "Well they have succeeded. Oxygen deficiency. This man asphyxiated. Probably poison."

"That's what's got us so worried." Lestrade motioned to a man huddled in the corner of the room. "This was the general's personal aide," he said. "He ate and drank everything that the general did, and yet he is fine. He called us as soon as the general was starting to feel sick, but it was too late."

Sherlock walked over to the thin black man. He sat in a chair his face a mask of sadness. "What was the last thing that he touched?" Sherlock asked.

The man pulled himself to his feet with some effort. Walking over to the table he pointed to two glasses .

John on the floor was still examining the body. "Sherlock," he said, "his breath, there's a smell...what is it? Almonds perhaps."

Sherlock was putting on his black gloves. He picked up first one glass and then the other and smelled them. "Yes, the smell of bitter almonds, cyanide. In one glass but not the other. "

"If it has a smell, wouldn't he have noticed it?" Lestrade asked.

"Not everyone can smell cyanide. It is a genetic trait. Fortunately it is one that both John and I share." Sherlock turned and asked the aide, "where did these glasses come from?"

"That shelf there," the man said, "But I washed them out myself by hand with soap. If there was anything on the glass, I would have cleaned it. Also, if only one glass was poisoned, how would they know which glass I would give to the general?"

Sherlock walked to the bar. He turned on the water and smelled it catching a drop on the end of his glove, he tasted it.

"Sherlock have a care." John said, "We are talking about poison."

Sherlock opened the cabinet and picked up each glass on the shelf smelling it. Then he turned back to the aid who stood looking down at the body of the general. He was visibly rattled. John stood up and with a hand on his arm led him to a chair.

Sherlock said, "explain to me exactly what you did before the General died."

The man looked up at Sherlock and then glanced at the body before saying, "The international court accepted his evidence today and decided to take sanctions against the government. We were hoping for more, but this is very good news. He says to me, "Let's have a Vodka to celebrate?" The man paused, his face a picture of pain.

"Go on" Sherlock said.

"I walked over and took two glasses from the shelf. I rinsed them in the sink, and then wiped them with the same towel. I poured in the vodka, and then served it."

Sherlock rushed over and picked up the towel sniffing it. "Nothing," He said dropping it back on the counter before examining the bottle of vodka. He smelled it, then he poured a tiny bit of vodka onto a saucer. He dug under the sink taking out a small bottle of ammonia. He poured the ammonia into the vodka but there was no reaction.

"What are you doing?" John asked.

"Testing for cyanide in the vodka." Sherlock said as he carefully poured vodka from the general's glass into another plate to which he added ammonia. It bubbled and turned black. Sherlock smiled. "Hydrogen cyanide polymerizes spontaneously at room temperature in the presence of ammonia. Hydrogen cyanide is one of the fastest working poisons."

"But how did it get here?" Lestrade asked. "This room has the highest security imaginable. The food was shipped in weeks ago to await the general's arrival. Every carton was checked. No one knew which safe house he would be in. And Frederick here ate and drank exactly the same things as the general. "

Sherlock knelt down beside Fredrick so that he looked into his eyes.

"Tell me _exactly_ what was said." Sherlock insisted.

The man closed his eyes visibly shaken and then he looked down and began to talk. "I said, '_Sanctions won't help M'bane escape to the West_.' He said, _'even so, it is a good thing. It is also good that you are here with me'. _" The man paused, " He said, '_You have been my rock and I couldn't do it without you I love you more than any brother._' and I said, _'I love you too_.' then he said, '_Let's have a vodka to celebrate_.' I washed the glasses. '_Make mine on the rocks_' he said '_and do you know when dinner will arrive because.._.' "

"Stop!" Sherlock said an expression of discovery on his face. He ran over to the sink and opened the ice bucket sniffing it.

"The ice!" John said.

"Yes." Sherlock said, "the ice."

"But why didn't the ice in your glass kill you?" Lestrade asked Fredrick.

"I don't take any," he replied.

"Where does this ice come from?" Sherlock asked looking around the room.

"Someone just brought it when we asked." Fredrick said to Sherlock's retreating back.

"Lestrade!" Sherlock called, "Show me."

"This way." Lestrade said leading them out of the room and down a hallway into another corridor that led to a small kitchen.

"The general's food is prepared here." He said.

Sherlock opened the refrigerator looking at the ice. He put a cube on the table and tested it. "It's in this ice as well."

"Then one of the cooks or possibly someone who moved the food in must have poisoned it." Lestrade said. "But everyone's background was double checked, triple checked. It's impossible that one of them did it."

"Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable must be the truth." Sherlock said as he closed the door, "John help me with this will you please."

Sherlock and John pulled the refrigerator away from the wall and Sherlock touched the tube leading from the ice maker. He traced it across the wall to a faucet that it passed over to exit the room through a small hole in wall. Sherlock pulled on the tube. He dug with his finger around the crack looking through the hole at another room.

"What's on the other side of this room?" Sherlock asked.

"Uh, I don't know." Lestrade replied. "a restaurant I think."

"That's where the cyanide came from, that must be where the assassins are. Come on John, If we're fast enough, we might catch them."

Lestrade rolled his eyes and sighed as they ran past him. "At least wait for back up will ya?" He said, but they had already gone.


	12. Chapter 12 Bound

John and Sherlock stood against the wall of the alley peering toward the back door of the restaurant.

"How do we get in, Sherlock?" John asked.

Sherlock strode toward the door.

"So much for waiting for backup" John said running behind Sherlock. "What's the plan?"

"I guess I'll use my charm." Sherlock replied.

"What charm?"

Sherlock rang the doorbell. A man's dark face stared through the cracked door. "Hi!" Sherlock said, "We are from just down the way and we were wondering if you might have a cup of sugar that we can borrow. " John rolled his eyes.

"Go away!" the man said starting to close the door. John stepped forward and kicked the door in sending the man sprawling to the floor as they entered.

Sherlock rushed toward the man, but he scrambled up and ran into another room before Sherlock could catch him.

"My plan could have worked." Sherlock said peering after the man before taking another path toward where Sherlock imagined the kitchen must be.

Sherlock and John ran down a hallway and through a door. They disturbed a group of women sitting at a table.

"Excuse me." John said as they passed only to turn and say, "Run Sherlock, as he saw a group of armed men coming toward them. Sherlock and John ran into the kitchen closing and locking the door just as a body pounded against it.

"John, your gun." Sherlock said.

"I didn't bring it."

"You didn't bring it? Why not!" Sherlock cried.

"I just got off of a charge of homicide, not to mention the jail time for fighting, do you think that I'd parade my gun in front of Lestrade after that? Why didn't you bring it."

"You're the crack shot, not me." Sherlock said searching the room and finding that there was no exit but the way that they had come. Sherlock grabbed a bottle of champagne and an opener and pulled John behind a large metal refrigerator.

"Do you seriously think that it's the right time for celebrating?" John asked as he watched Sherlock pulling at the foil on the bottle.

"If we make a loud sound," Sherlock said, "They may think that we are armed and give me more time to come up with a plan to get out of here."

Just then someone shot at the door blowing off the lock.

"Now, we are in trouble" John said squeezing against Sherlock in the small space as the door bashed open.

An armed man cautiously entered the room. As he came level with the refrigerator, Sherlock popped the cork so that it hit him in the face. The man fell to the floor unconscious.

John rushed out to get the fallen man's gun. As he jumped back into his hiding space, gunshots whizzed past his head and one hit him in the shoulder. John fell back against the side of the dishwasher sliding to his knees in the crack where they were hiding.

Sherlock fell down beside him "John!" he cried, "You've been shot!"

John laughed, "Get a grip, Sherlock, it's just a flesh wound." Switching his gun to his other hand so that he could apply pressure to the wound. "The towel Sherlock!" He whispered.

Sherlock was panicked, but he took the dish towel and tied it tightly around John's arm as more gunshots bounced off of the back wall.

"Now you'll have to use the gun, I can't shoot like this." John said. "Come sit in front of me, I'll guide you."

Sherlock knelt down in front of John his gun arm extended in both hands as John looked over his shoulder. Sherlock aimed at the doorway, John's lips near his ear. "Lean forward Sherlock. Look down, you shouldn't see your toes."

"I'm not supposed to look down, I'm supposed to ..."

"Now!" John said and Sherlock pulled the trigger sending a shot through the open doorway. The man trying to enter jumped back into the hallway.

"What the hell were you aiming at." John said?

"You didn't tell me to aim." Sherlock said.

"Next time someone comes in, aim for their leg."

"Their leg?"

"I would go for the shoulder, but with your bad aim, you'd hit them in the heart."

"Are you insulting my shooting ability?" Sherlock asked disgustedly.

"Yes." John said. "Keep your arms up!"

"This gun is heavy." Sherlock whined.

"Don't be a wimp. Fire!" Sherlock shot twice, the second shot hitting the man in the leg. He fell and pulled himself out of the line of sight. Sherlock smiled turning his head toward John.

"Eyes forward Sherlock." John ordered and Sherlock turned around.

"Where's Lestrade?" Sherlock said. "He should be here by now."

John laughed again. "I guess we shouldn't have rushed ahead then."

"Don't blame me." Sherlock said, "You're the one who kicked the door in."

Another bullet whizzed by their head making them both jump. Sherlock let out another two rounds.

Sherlock sat down on his foot, his arm still outstretched. He pressed against John who sat holding his bloody arm, a tight grin on his face.

"John," Sherlock said, "On a scale of one to five, how would you rate your feelings of contentment right now?

"Sherlock, I'm bleeding and we're being shot at."

"I know, but you like this, don't you?" Sherlock added, "this is the thing that you were missing?"

"Can you focus, Sherlock. Someone's trying to kill us."

"Yes, and you are the happiest that I've seen you in weeks."

"This is the police!" A voice called out." Put down your weapons and come out with your hands in the air."

John smiled. "Now I'm happy." he said, " But don't drop your guard."

The sound of even more bullets flying by caused Sherlock and John to fall to the floor. They heard the sound of a tear gas grenade.

Great, just great!" John said crawling on his hands and knees toward the door.

Screams echoed through the building as Sherlock and John cautiously crawled through the hallway dishtowels covering their mouths. They exited to bright lights and police in riot garb.

Later, after the assassins were safely in custody, Sherlock reentered the restaurant. A water bucket containing hydrogen cyanide confirmed Sherlock's theory. John sat in the back of an ambulance having his arm properly bandaged. Sherlock walked to him.

"Tore a hole in my favorite coat."

"I'll buy you another one."

"Do you understand the concept, favorite?" John asked. Sherlock smiled, and then John did.

Lestrade walked up. "What in God's name did you think that you were doing storming that restaurant alone? I told you to wait for backup."

"Sorry." John said and the total inadequacy of the reply sent Sherlock and John into hysterics of laughter. Lestrade shook his head and walked off.

Later that evening when the two of them were safely back in Baker street. John sat in his chair pecking at his laptop with one hand.

"Are you writing this in your blog?" Sherlock asked.

"Of course." He said, "It makes a great story."

"Are you sure that you're not hurt?"

"Don't worry, the wound was superficial. It'll be mostly healed in a week."

"John"

"Yes, Sherlock?"

"You remember what you said about Icarus?" Sherlock said, "About how you can't be detached about me. About how when I am hurt you get so emotional that you don't know if you can survive?"

"Yeah, I did say that, but I've been thinking. Maybe I was a bit rash deciding to move out like this. I'd like to try to stay for a while. See how things go, if that's okay with you. It is okay with you isn't it Sherlock?"

"What? Yes it's okay. Definitely it is okay to stay, yes." Sherlock answered.

"But I interrupted you Sherlock," John apologized. "What were you trying to say?"

"I just wanted to say." Sherlock sat forward and looked at John who noticed his gaze and stopped typing to look back at him. "When it comes to your safety John, I'm like Icarus too. If anything were to happen to you..." Sherlock's face contorted into an expression of distress. John put down the laptop and knelt on the carpet, reaching out with his good arm to touch the edge of Sherlock's hand. Sherlock clasped John's hand in his and they stared at each other in silence until John smiled and Sherlock smiled in return. Then John sat back in his chair and began typing again.

Sherlock steepled his hands listening as the downstairs door opened and closed. "Mrs Hudson has been at the bakery again. I wonder if she bought those pastries that I like."

"You could go down and ask her." John said without looking up.

"Too tired." Sherlock said stretching out his legs and slouching down in his chair. "You do it."

"I'm the invalid here, remember?" John said smiling.

"I'm so bored." Sherlock groaned.

"Now things are really back to normal." John said chuckling as Mrs Hudson slowly walked up the stairs.


End file.
